---

name: skill-validator description: Validate skills against best practices for YAML frontmatter, structure, content standards, file organization, and security. Use when creating new skills, updating existing skills, before packaging skills, reviewing skill quality, or when user mentions "validate skill", "check skill", "skill best practices", "skill review", or "lint skill".

Skill Validator

Validate skills against Anthropic's best practices for structure, content, and security.

Quick Start

Copyscripts/validate_skill.py /path/to/skill-directory

With severity filter:

Copyscripts/validate_skill.py /path/to/skill --min-severity warning

Validation Categories

Severity Levels

Output Example

Copy=== Skill Validation Report: my-skill ===

Summary: 0 critical, 1 error, 2 warnings, 1 suggestion

[ERROR] SS002: SKILL.md exceeds 500 lines (523 lines)
  Location: SKILL.md
  Fix: Split content into WORKFLOW.md, EXAMPLES.md, TROUBLESHOOTING.md

[WARNING] CW001: Second-person language detected
  Location: SKILL.md:45
  Found: "You should create..."
  Fix: Use imperative: "Create..."

Command Options

Copy--min-severity {critical,error,warning,suggestion}  # Filter output
--format {text,json}                                # Output format
--ignore RULE1,RULE2                                # Skip specific rules

Common Issues

"False positive on second-person"

• Context-appropriate "you" may be acceptable
• Use --ignore CW001 to suppress

"Script security warning"

• Add inline comment: # skill-validator: ignore SC001

See TROUBLESHOOTING.md for complete issue handling.

References

• EXAMPLES.md - Real validation outputs
• references/RULES_REFERENCE.md - Complete rules documentation